know whether she loved him or not; and every marriageable man in three
counties was just aching for the chance to court her, and I didn't feel
that he dared risk hurting her feelings.

Laddie said, to be the man who conquered the Princess and to whom she
lifted her lips for a first kiss was worth life itself. I made up my
mind that night that he knew just exactly what he was talking about. I
thought so too. And I seemed to understand why Laddie--Laddie in his
youth, strength, and manly beauty, Laddie, who boasted that there was
not a nerve in his body--trembled before the Princess.

It looked as if she had set herself against him and was working for the
honours, and if she wanted them, I didn't feel that he should chance
beating her, and then, too, it was beginning to be plain that it was
none too sure he could. Laddie didn't seem to be the only one who had
been well drilled in spelling.

I held my jaws set a minute, so that I could speak without Laddie
knowing how I was shivering, and then I whispered: "Except her eyes
are softer, she looks just like a cardinal."

Laddie nodded emphatically and moving a step nearer laid his elbow
across my knees. Heavens, how they spelled! They finished all the
words I ever heard and spelled like lightning through a lot of others
the meaning of which I couldn't imagine. Father never gave them out at
home. They spelled epiphany, gaberdine, ichthyology, gewgaw,
kaleidoscope, and troubadour. Then Laddie spelled one word two
different ways; and the Princess went him one better, for she spelled
another three.

They spelled from the Bible, Nebuchadnezzar, Potiphar, Peleg,
Belshazzar, Abimelech, and a host of others I never heard the minister
preach about. Then they did the most dreadful thing of all. "Broom,"
pronounced the teacher, and I began mentally, b-r-o-o-m, but Laddie
spelled "b-r-o-u-g-h-a-m," and I stared at him in a daze. A second
later Miss Amelia gave out "Beecham" to the Princess, and again I tried
it, b-e-e-c-h, but the Princess was spelling "B-e-a-u-c-h-a-m-p," and I
almost fell from the window.

They kept that up until I was nearly crazy with nervousness; I forgot I
was half frozen. I pulled Laddie's sleeve and whispered in his ear:
"Do you think she'll cry if you beat her?"

I was half crying myself, the strain had been awful. I was torn
between these dearest loves of mine.

"Seen me have any chance to beat her?" retorted Laddie.

Miss Amelia see